Kim Jong-il, Psycho Killer and Party Animal

A
new biography of Kim Jong-il, President of North Korea, by British author
Michael Breen, titled "Kim Jong-il: North
Korea’s Dear Leader," paints a bizarre and contradictory portrait of
the eccentric Communist.

Breen is a veteran British journalist with 20 years’ experience
in Korea. A review in the Korea
Economic Reader describes the book as "an adventure, filled with horror,
merriment and commentary running from the wry to the ribald." Some excerpt
from the review offer insights into the reclusive leader:

To characterize Kim Jong-il, for instance, the author cites an unconfirmed
incident in which the Dear Leader, after a hard night of drinking with
friends, grants a "fellow party animal" permission to execute
his wife. The apparent reason was that the wife was distressed at how
dissolute her husband had become in the Dear Leader’s company and had
impertinently complained about it in a letter to Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong-il,
who liked to party, preferred that his father be kept in the dark.

Recounted later is Kim Jong-il’s bizarre kidnapping of a film industry
couple from the South in an apparent effort to improve the quality
of movies made in the North. The infamously luxurious train journey
three years ago that Kim took across Russia to meet President Vladimir
Putin is colorfully recalled, complete with fresh lobster and dancing
girls.

Mr. Breen makes a passing effort to be fair. Though describing him
as a man who was once the world’s greatest consumer of wildly expensive
French cognac and who often had naked women on hand for various festivities,
Mr. Breen writes that "there are no consistent reports to suggest
that the North Korean leader is particularly debauched, at least no
more so than your average businessman in Asia."

Despite the obvious and terrible suffering of the North Korean population,
the Dowbrigade finds it strangely comforting that there remain a few bizarre
and colorful
megalomaniacs left in the world, in the oversized tradition of Papa Doc
Duvalier, Haille Sellassie, Idi Amin and Juan Peron.

We know that sounds callous and snotty, but consider how much more entertaining
these guys are than the straight laced, boringly gray but infinitely more
successful megalomaniacs running the United States these days. Be that
as it may, this book sounds like an interesting read on a cold winter night…

from Korea
Economic Reader (subscription newsletter)